Okay, so here we go again. Every month a story appears that gives us a new production start date for the two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, and generally each story always say it’ll be a month later than we’d previously heard. So while we wait for rumours that production will start in February 2011, we can entertain ourselves with this month’s report that it will begin shooting in January.
While many of these Hobbit titbits seem to have been spun out of nothing, this one does at least come from Ian McKellen, who told The Bolton News that, “the aim is to start filming in January”. However there’s little certainty in that statement, and McKellen has suggested dates before that came and went, with no filming taking place due to the problems caused by MGM’s financial difficulties, which are holding up the movie (MGM holds a 50% stake in the films). Indeed McKellen got so fed up at one point, he even suggested he might not return as Gandalf if they didn’t get a move on.
However, there does seem to be more momentum in The Hobbit now, with Peter Jackson and co. reportedly in talks with Martin Freeman about the role of Bilbo, and rumours Spyglass Entertainment has approached MGM to buy out their stake in the project and get things moving again. So will it shoot in January? Who knows, but let’s hope.